self expression on facebook

art, music, clothing, hair, fancy cars, poetry...these are some of the ways people typically express themselves. and actually facebook is a great way to find out how one does it. the internet is basically a big posterboard where everyone finds a way to post their ideas, personality, life, to a public domain where people can view it. that's the idea behind social networking.

if you look at facebook, you can tell the personality of a person by their posting. typical college facebook obsession aside, there are many different styles of facebook posting. some people use it as a blog, and write note after note, tagging all their friends so they can read about the carried-over teenage angst. others use photo albums and are prolific with a camera. still others like to share links, and while this involves nothing being created by the author himself it does show a lot about their interests - ie, are you a techie news junkie or pop culture vulture? others may simply be constantly changing their about me and profile, or interacting with so many friends on their walls that it's hard to follow who they are because it is changing by the minute. and then there are others who have empty facebook profiles. that's because they have a real social life, and interact with _real_ people.

i suppose i am more of a poster. i read digg and boing boing and share interesting links. i do it on facebook because it will automatically share it with my friends, in the hopes that they will read it, read about me, contact me, interact with me, make my days less tiresome. i also write in this blog...more for my own sake than anyone elses, because i think i have three regular subscribers, who must be bored off their ass at work.

but blogging and copying and pasting links is easy. i would eventually like to be able to express myself in more ways. clothing and hair require too much money and attention to style, so i think i will be looking into photography (via facebook or flickr) and video/documentary editing. ah yes, the traditional definition of "art" through multimedia. but hopefully combined with tools such as blogs and facebook posts, they will be much more interesting to the hungry masses who are dying to know who i am.